One thing RISC OS badly needs is users to actually purchase new products. So many comments on forums follow the line 'I haven't upgraded because..." or "I still use my 10/12/16 year old RiscPC..." and the users actually sound proud of the fact when they announce it.

Software authors cannot live on royalties 12 years on, users must upgrade in order to keep development moving. Another issue is that new products and software upgrades are driven by the market - if the users do not request products, then no-one can blame the authors for not producing them. I have seen this myself with RiscCAD - no user has requested a single feature in well over 12 months - so where is my motivation to improve or modify the software.

I consider myself a competent programmer, but a programmer needs to feel their creation is going to be used otherwise where is the motivation. I have all but ceased writing for RISC OS, for several reasons, the main one is available time. However, what would have been useful when I was is help locating things such as technical specs, file formats etc, which are sometimes hard and time consuming to find - all of which reduces the time left to code anything. I think this is where non-programmers could really help coders.

In retrospect, are products like Aemulor such a good thing, as they limit the incentive of users to purchase upgraded software.

I think that too much discussion is being placed on the browser issue. Many people have access to a browser, whether on RISC OS or not. What is needed is a vibrant software/hardware market. Once this is in place, there is a chance software companies will look again at the platform, or at least home grown programmers may evolve from the userbase with enough time to develop things further.